Tero Saarinen has had a distinguished international career both as a dancer and a choreographer. He has made more than 40 creations, for Tero Saarinen Company and other prominent dance groups.
Nederlands Dans Theater (NDT1), the Batsheva Dance Company (Israel), Ballet Gullbenkian (Portugal), the ballets of Lyon, Lorraine and Marseille (France), the Gothenburg Opera Ballet (Sweden), the National Dance Company of Korea (South Korea), the Finnish National Ballet, and many others have featured Saarinen’s works in their repertoires. Among his key works are Westward Ho! (1996), the Stravinsky reinterpretation HUNT (2002), Borrowed Light (2004) inspired by the Shakers, Morphed (2014), set to music by Esa-Pekka Salonen, and Jean Sibelius' Kullervo (2015), which was presented with the Finnish National Opera and Ballet. His most recent choreographies include Third Practice (2019), to Monteverdi’s madrigals; a multidisciplinary Macbeth (2024); and Study for Life (2025), set to music by Kaija Saariaho.
As a choreographer Saarinen is known for his unique movement language, Tero Technique, ’an inventive mixture of grotesqueness and beauty’ that plays with balance, and off-balance. The technique fuses elements from his backgrounds in ballet, contemporary dance, and a wide range of Asian traditions. His internationally acclaimed choreographies have often been described as total artworks. Saarinen has received numerous acknowledgements of his work as an artist, both in Finland and abroad.